VOWEL NASALIZATION IN AMERICAN ENGLISH: ACOUSTIC VARIABILITY DUE TO PHONETIC CONTEXT

Nancy F. Chen1, Janet Slifka2 & Kenneth N. Stevens3
1Speech & Hearing Bioscience & Technology, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology; Speech Communication Group, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 2Speech Communication Group, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 3 Speech & Hearing Bioscience & Technology, Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology; Speech Communication Group, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

ID 1171
[full paper]

This study quantifies acoustic variation of vowel nasalization arising from phonetic context in American English with an emphasis on carryover contexts. While qualitative articulatory trajectories and phonetic descriptions suggest that a vowel is nasalized in carryover contexts, few acoustic studies have examined this issue. Our acoustic analyses investigate the vowel /i/ and show that: (1) a vowel can be nasalized with at least one adjacent nasal consonant, even if the nasal consonant is pre-vocalic; (2) vowels with nasal consonants on both sides (NVN) do not guarantee more vowel nasalization.